We recently had the pleasure of welcoming back Ayse Birsel, a founding faculty member of SVA’s Products of Design program, for an intimate one-hour workshop with students. An internationally recognized designer and author of Design the Life You Love, Ayse’s return felt especially meaningful—both for the faculty, who were excited to have her back, and for Ayse herself, who spoke about SVA as a kind of home.

Each year, PoD’s first-year students are tasked with scripting, storyboarding, pitching, and producing a 3–5 minute film in just seven weeks. Over the course of the class, each student pitches their concept, and with the support of collaborating teams, seven final films make it into production and premiere at Oscar Night. The only guiding prompt: Each film must center around a designed object or experience from the student’s body of work, building a world where that design can flourish and tell its story.

Last week, POD's first-year students headed uptown to the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, one of New York's great design institutions tucked into Carnegie Mansion on Fifth Avenue. Students were there to see two exhibitions both circling a question that sits at the heart of what we study at POD: Does the human shape the object, or does the object shape the human?

A few snapshots from Halloween at SVA’s MFA Products of Design program: Year 1 turned Becky Stern’s Making Studio class into a glowing, buzzing, overachieving costume lab

Join us tomorrow to hear from the first in an exciting lineup of speakers this fall! Christa May (she/they) is a Brooklyn-based designer, researcher, and cultural worker.